So, if 2008 hopeful Mitt Romney becomes president, will young men be expected to ride bicycles and wear white shirts while doing two years of rigidly celibate national service? Will Shiner Bock and Starbucks be banned? Or will we simply stay the course for four more fun-filled years of Republican leadership? Since a number of Americans apparently have serious qualms about voting for a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—whose adherents, better known as Mormons, are often identified by their mission work, avoidance of alcohol and coffee, and family centeredness—I decided to look into the matter.

As it happens, Latter-day Saints are easy to locate. More than 260,000 live in Texas, distributed among five hundred “wards,” or congregations. In some locations, including the one I visited in the Houston suburb of Pearland, two or more wards share a facility, meeting at separate times. The church’s temples, of which Texas has four (in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Lubbock), tend to be striking edifices. Local ward buildings reflect a concern for function over form. The Pearland meetinghouse is attractive, but there are no extras: no artwork, no statuary, no stained-glass windows.

The congregation, numbering almost 250, and the service itself reflected this conservative, no-frills approach. Most of the men wore dark suits with white shirts and ties. Almost all of the unjacketed, including boys of no more than twelve or thirteen, wore white shirts and ties. The women, many of them young mothers, were dressed like, well, young mothers. I later learned that the Silverlake Ward, situated in an area filled with young families, has 63 children under the age of three and another 84 between three and eleven. I think nearly all were present that morning, with the babbling and familiar child noises creating a distracting din.

Latter-day Saints gather for three hours each Sunday. Typically, the “sacrament meeting,” which I attended, precedes two hours of classes and comprises a familiar mix of announcements, hymns, prayers, Communion, and homilies. Wards have no paid clergy, and leadership positions change. Bishop Bradley S. Owens, who presides over the service, is an optometrist by profession; when his term as bishop ends, he will assume some other volunteer position, such as head of one of the Scout troops every ward sponsors. The bishop is aided by two counselors, one of whom, a urologist and assistant professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, gave the welcome and made announcements. Several members of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods, the lower and higher orders of male church leaders twelve and older, oversaw the distribution of the sacrament.

Most sacrament meetings include two or three brief presentations by members of the church, chosen by the bishop and speaking on topics he either assigns or approves. On this occasion, a teenage girl told of her positive experiences at a church-sponsored girls’ camp, a Chinese American woman spoke of the importance of regular study of the Scriptures, and her husband offered an overview of the church’s distinctive view of Scripture, including the belief that “the heavens are not closed,” so when the church’s president, currently 97-year-old Gordon B. Hinckley, announces a revelation from God, it becomes binding on the church with a force equal to written Scripture. (Such revelations, conveniently coincident with federal law and social pressure, led church apostles to ban polygamy in 1890—it is still practiced only among splinter sects, which are considered heretical by the main body—and to open the priesthood to black men in 1978.)